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EIEIO…Fast Facts
Entrepreneurship: 20 – The number of US startups that received a valuation of $1 billion or more in H2 2023, compared to 181 in H2 2021. (Carta)
Innovation: 10.1% – The percentage of Palantir alumni who are now in a founder role. (Live Data Technologies)
Education: #251 out of 251 – Harvard’s placement (dead-last) in the 2025 College Free Speech Rankings. (FIRE)
Impact: 68.5% – The percentage increase in daily hours spent gaming by men ages 15-24 from 2019-2022. (Paul Graham)
Opportunity: 11 – The number of states that include girl’s flag football as a varsity sport. (Athletic Business)
“Go direct or go home.” – Lulu Cheng Meservey
“The toughest thing about the power of trust is that it's very difficult to build and very easy to destroy.” – Thomas J. Watson
“Legacy media was shrinking—but now it’s imploding.” – Ted Gioia
Remember playing the game of "telephone" as a kid? It begins with one person whispering a message into someone else's ear, and the message travels around the circle. Typically, by the time it reaches the last person, it’s unrecognizable from the original content.
The more friction between a news source and its recipient, the more distortion.
Newspaper revenue peaked in 2006.
That same year, Twitter was founded.
The iPhone came out in 2007, Facebook reached 100 million users in 2008, and Instagram was launched in 2010. This was a knockout combo for our collective attention spans. Businesses and media publishers realized this, and the fight for clicks and eyeballs was on.
In this early 2010s period, our Facebook feeds were flooded with silly, strange, and mostly vacuous content from groups like Buzzfeed and Vice. Changes to the Facebook algorithm (de-prioritizing features that send users off their platform to publishers’ sites) slashed traffic to the webpages where publishers hosted advertisements – in many cases their far-too-concentrated source of revenue.
Many media darlings of the 2010s have died or been put on life support in the past ~5 years.
In many cases, this is because they were nearsighted in their strategy. They opted for clickbait when young people crave community. This is a key element in the shift from the attention economy to the intimacy economy. Communities (and, in the most successful cases, cult-like followings) are built through audience trust. Trust is built through transparency, authenticity, and consistency. The best way for individuals and businesses to do this is DIRECTLY.
The media businesses that have faltered in recent years have platforms like Substack, X, YouTube, and Spotify to blame. These democratized content creation and distribution – no one needs a news network to hire them for their voice to be heard. We want to hear from smart, interesting people – we don’t want to read faceless, quantity-over-quality content from difficult-to-define digital publishing brands.
From Bari Weiss to Dave Portnoy to Marc Andreessen to Tobi Lutke, business leaders are pulling back the curtain on their companies, missions, and personas by cutting out the middlemen and speaking directly to their tribes.
Why does this private equity CEO have 1 million followers on TikTok? Because he knows that at the end of the day, businesses are just people. He creates content so others can understand what motivates him as a leader, who he enjoys working with, and to pay it forward to others with wisdom and advice. His short-form videos set the tone for who he is and what he has built.
With each tweet, Substack essay, and podcast appearance, these bosses are marketing their businesses, building their brands, attracting talent, and lowering customer acquisition costs. Their content serves as the top of the funnel for many key areas of business development.
They’re not at the mercy of countless committees or consultants who carefully craft their every word before sending out a clunky press release. Instead, they’re controlling the narrative as the person who is actually in the trenches.
Who is the head of the Free Press? Bari Weiss, duh.
Who is the CEO of CNN? Fox News? Uhh…
Who is the boss at Barstool Sports? Dave Portnoy, obviously.
Who is the CEO of ESPN? Couldn’t tell ya.
Who is the CEO of Mr. Beast? Well, Mr. Beast (Jimmy Donaldson) of course.
Who is the CEO of Nickelodeon? No clue.
It’s no wonder why young people are so much more passionate about the former in each of these examples. They feel like they know the leaders and they feel a part of a community.
You can hardly set foot in a bar, visit a golf course, or even walk through the airport without seeing someone wearing Barstool merchandise. When is the last time you saw someone wearing an “ESPN” hat?
On top of everything else, going direct is just flat-out efficient. In July, Joe Biden took to X to announce his resignation from the Presidential race. There was a 16-minute gap between his post and the first report by a legacy media company.
In GSV’s 5 Ps framework for evaluating a company, the people come first (before product, potential, predictability, and purpose). People need leaders, and leaders need to take ownership. The leaders of the Stars of Tomorrow will cut out the middlemen, take communications by the reins, and earn the trust of their employees, customers, and prospects.
Market Performance
Market Commentary
Open AI raised another $6.6 billion last week on its way to having a $157 billion private market value. MIT professor Daron Acemoglu said that AI is heading for a crash as there is no way to live up to the hype.
Effectively equating Artificial Intelligence to a new drug coming on the Market, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law a process requiring new AI technologies to be approved by a government body. Over the past month, Newsom has put his John Hancock on 18 bills focused on AI including prohibiting “deep fakes” on politicians (a judge overturned that last week).
A blow-out jobs report offset rising tensions in the Middle East, with stocks ending the week only a smidgen above where they started. The Dow and Nasdaq were up .1% and the S&P 500 inched up .2%.
Goldman Sachs strategist Sun said “the animal spirits” have come back to the Chinese market with stocks rising another 16% last week. Investor bullishness has been catalyzed by the Chinese Government’s stimulus.
While there are many issues to be nervous about…there always are…stocks “climb a wall of worry”. Moreover, we are encouraged by the broadening of participation in the Market’s upside and an IPO Calendar that is starting to fill up.
Accordingly, we remain BULLISH.
Need to Know
READ: Dude Perfect hires former NBA exec as first-ever CEO | SBJ
WATCH: Reid Hoffman Gets Pitched on Linkedin By Reid Hoffman from 20 Years Ago | LinkedIn
LISTEN: Inside OpenAI’s First Venture Round (Khosla), AI Leaderboards, and Regulatory Chess Games | This Won’t Last with Keith Rabois, Kevin Ryan, Logan Bartlett, and Zach Weinberg
ICYMI: 🎙️ Ep 25 · Dave & Helen Edwards: Co-Founders of Artificiality | Ed on the Edge | Dash Media
GSV’s Four I’s of Investor Sentiment
GSV tracks four primary indicators of investor sentiment: inflows and outflows of mutual funds and ETFs, IPO activity, interest rates, and inflation.
#1: Inflows and Outflows for Mutual Funds & ETFs
#2: IPO Market
#3: Interest Rates
#4: Inflation
Charts of the Week
Maggie Moe’s GSV Weekly Rap
Chuckles of the Week
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Connecting the Dots & EIEIO…
Old MacDonald had a farm, EIEIO. New MacDonald has a Startup….EIEIO: Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Education, Impact and Opportunity. Accordingly, we focus on these key areas of the future.
One of the core goals of GSV is to connect the dots around EIEIO and provide perspective on where things are going and why. If you like this, please forward to your friends. Onward!
Make Your Dash Count!
-MM